Question

What role does language play in the Sociology of knowledge？

What is ideology and what is an example of an ideology？

Answer 1

What role does language play in the Sociology of knowledge？

IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY

                     Language is basically a system of communication where sound or signs convey objects, actions and ideas. In fact, Aristotle says man is a rational animal and that what sets him apart, what raises him above the animals, is that he has the ability to reason, and it is very clear that he cannot reason without language.

                      Language is social by nature and thus inseparably connected with people who are its creators and users; it grows and develops together with the development of society. Stalin observes about language, “It arises and develops with the rise and development of a society. It dies when the society dies. Apart from society there is no language.”

                     Much has been said about the relationship between language and society. In the history of linguistics, it is rare to find investigations of any language which are entirely cut off from concurrent investigations of the history of that language, or of its regional and social distributions, or of its relationship to objects, ideas, events, and actual speakers and listeners in the 'real' world. It is believed that "Man's relation with the society is so intimate and close that it is very difficult to isolate him from the social environment in which he is born, nurtured and grown to be a man."

                        According to Jean A Laponce: "When the protections cost of its language does not have any more sufficient compensation in the form of social and psychological earnings, languages disappear"

BASIC FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

                           Language is often said to be a tool because it is used to perform the function of letting other people know the thoughts, ideas or emotions. Language serves a multiplicity of purposes. In accordance with the different purposes to be served language is used in different ways. For example, there is the language of science, journalism, advertising, political oratory, prayer and worship. In these instances language is used as a multipurpose tool and put to various uses as and when required. The basic function of language is to communicate information of some kind or other. Propaganda of all kinds and even deliberate misinformation could come under the term information. In order to describe the world and reason about it people may make use of true or false propositions, correct or incorrect arguments and pass on information which may or may not be important. It becomes evident however that language is informative in function. Language is used to inform others, to ask them to do certain things and to express feelings, moods, ideas, information, experiences etc.

                             Language undoubtedly has a very important social purpose because it is mainly used for linguistic communication. It is difficult to envisage a society without language which is the basis of human progress. It is the flesh and blood of human culture. Language is an extremely complex and highly versatile code that is used to communicate thoughts, desires and experiences to other persons. It is central to ones identity as an individual and as a marker of a social group. The use of a particular language variety identifies each of us as belonging to a particular social group. Language like society is constantly evolving and is subject to growth and change in much the same way as a living organism.

                                There are several possible relationships between language and society. One is that social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behaviour. Certain evidence may be used to support this view. One of the evidences is that young children speak differently from older children and, in turn, children speak differently from mature adults. The varieties of language that speakers use reflect such matters as their regional, social or ethnic origin and possibly even their gender. It is also seen that particular ways of speaking, choice of words, and even rules for conversing are in fact highly determined by certain social requirements. Socrates and Plato consider language to be a mechanism which provides truth and knowledge. When engaging in argument, Socrates is given a definition of a word such as courage, justice or piety. Socrates instead of coming up with his own definition, offers a situation in which the given definition is incorrect and then challenges his opponents to find something which is common to all courageous, just or pious acts.

                               What Plato and Socrates aim at is to locate the commonality in things. Knowledge is to know what isn't evident in the object or action, but to identify what it is that makes all objects and actions of the sort be what they are, despite all of their internal differences. According to Plato and Socrates this knowledge can be attained only through proper language use. In Plato's 'Republic', his cave analogy describes a prisoner who has spent all of his life in bondage looking at nothing but shadow puppets on the back of a cave wall. For him, all, which he believes to be true, are the actions and reactions of the shadow puppets. His entire reality is essentially a shrouded image of the truth. Now it so happens that the prisoner is released from bondage and, for the first time stands up, exits the cave and sees the light of the sun. The prisoner gazes on his body and on all the things in the sunlight and for the first time sees the truth of what actually is and realizes the falsities with which he has lived for all of his life. Plato is here using the sun as a metaphor for the focusing lens provided by dialectic. The sunlight provided the prisoner the ability to see the incompleteness of his reality. Thus according to Socrates and Plato language not only enables man to see the incompleteness of his own way of thinking but also provides a means with which to view things in their completeness. Socrates devised the Socratic method of argumentation wherein he uses language in argument to enhance and expound upon a given definition, and then to amplify and refine what is said until all parties understand and agree.

                             Language constitutes of both linguistic and communicative competence. It is an abstract set of psychological principles and sociological consideration that constitutes a person's competence as a speaker in a given situation. These principles make available to him an unlimited number of sentences he can draw upon in concrete situations and provide him with the ability to understand and create entirely new sentences. Language is a set of principles that a speaker masters and not anything that he does.

                             In short, a language is a code which is different from the act of encoding; it is a speaker's linguistic competence rather than his linguistic performance. However linguistic competence has to be coupled with communicative competence. Sociolinguists stress the use of language according to the occasion and context, the speaker and listener, the profession and social status of the speaker and the listener. Thus language is the result of social interaction.

                           Society and language are correlative terms. Language is a social product, springing up with the first community, developing with the increasing needs of culture and civilization, and disappearing when society disappears. Thus language happens to be the index of the progress of society. The longer a society exists, the richer is the language. Edward Sapir says that, "It is difficult to see adequately the functions of language because it is so deeply rooted in the whole of human behaviour that it may be suspected that there is little in the functional side of our conscious behaviour in which language does not play its part".Language thus happens to be a great force of socialization. Language itself is a mirror of society. The values of society can be reflected in its language.

What is ideology and what is an example of an ideology？

                The word ideology does not have a single clear definition and is used in a variety of ways. Its most common use in every-day language is to describe a broad, cohesive set of political ideas and beliefs (e.g. liberalism, socialism, conservatism, etc.). You will encounter ideology used in this way in sociology, but you will encounter it used in other ways too, most particularly by Marxists.

                 The Marxist concept of ideology is a word to describe a set of ideas and beliefs that are dominant in society and are used to justify the power and privilege of the ruling class. While the mainstream use of the word ideology is effectively neutral (it can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective) this is clearly a negative concept of ideology: ideology is used to obscure the truth, to give people a false picture of how the world works in order to manipulate and control them.

                    In related, but subtly different, definitions, ideology is also used to describe an official set of beliefs and ideas associated with a political system (usually an oppressive, authoritarian system based on a single ideology) or the world-view associated with a religion.

                    The Marxist view of ideology is shared by many feminists who argue that it is patriarchal ideology that maintains the dominant role of men in society. According to radical feminists, one of the ways it achieves this is by convincing women that patriarchy is natural, normal or even desirable. This is very similar to the Marxist concept of false consciousness.

                      Marxists argue that if the proletariat really understood the exploitative nature of capitalist society and their place within it, there would be a revolution. What prevents revolution is ideology: a set of ideas that creates an illusion. That convinces the workers (or enough of them) that capitalism is fair; that they are not being exploited by the system and those who are wealthy have worked hard and deserve their success. Marxists argue that this ideology is reinforced by a wide range of institutions in society (what Althusser called ideological state apparatus). Religion forms part of that ideological state apparatus, as we shall see in the next section.

Evaluating the Marxist view of ideology

• Somewhat ironically, Marxism itself could be said to have performed the role described by Marx in the Soviet Union and other communist countries.
• Karl Popper argues that the Marxist view of ideology is impossible to study scientifically, because its effects are impossible to falsify. If a worker expressed contentedness with their situation or the system, how could this be scientifically shown to be false consciousness as a result of ideology? For traditional Marxists this is almost an article of faith as it is clearly the case that such a view would go against the worker’s own material interests.
• Some neo-Marxists suggest that the idea that the working class do not know their own mind and have been indoctrinated by bourgeois ideology is patronising and disempowering. Many feminists (other than radical feminists) take a similar view regarding the idea that women have been brainwashed by patriarchal ideology and therefore do not know what they want. Arguably, the suggestion that ideology leads to false consciousness is just a convenient explanation for not being able to persuade people of the strength of their arguments!
• The suggestion in traditional Marxist approaches to this is that there is just that one ideology in society, but some neo-Marxists argue that this is just the dominant ideology. There are other competing sets of ideas in society, some of which can be developed in opposition to the ruling class. This idea is developed particularly by Antonio Gramsci and his concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony.